"NASA has discovered more than 2,000 exoplanets that could potentially be home to some sort of life – but we know very little about them. Today, that all changed, as NASA unveiled a solar system with a staggering 7 Earth-like planets that are similar in size and density to our own."

Read more about the find and a bit depressed. The star is only half a billion years old. That means the planets are equally very young. Our Earth at half a billion years had water and very simple life but existed in a reduction atmosphere for a very long time. Not very hospitable and definitely on the Atmosphere A+ scale for the UWP.

Regardless, I'm going to use this system as an example of why demands for realistic sysgen are a waste of time; show me one sysgen that could have generated this very real one before this week.....hell even GG in torch orbits are barely accounted for in supposedly up to date ones.....

Nearly every popular scifi media portrays our galaxy as unrealistic. Most worlds we have found are dead balls for habitation as we know it. Even these that get the terms 'life' and 'habitable' are more whimsy and wishing for the public. A planet like Earth is obviously possible but it seems the conditions needed are exceedingly rare and demanding. I'd say if we even discover FTL, we are exploring a wilderness of unusable or untouchable rocks. For that reason, I more than accept any system generator that makes the universe a fun and exciting place to play in.

Nearly every popular scifi media portrays our galaxy as unrealistic. Most worlds we have found are dead balls for habitation as we know it. Even these that get the terms 'life' and 'habitable' are more whimsy and wishing for the public. A planet like Earth is obviously possible but it seems the conditions needed are exceedingly rare and demanding. I'd say if we even discover FTL, we are exploring a wilderness of unusable or untouchable rocks. For that reason, I more than accept any system generator that makes the universe a fun and exciting place to play in.

"Unusable" is something of a relative term: It depends entirely upon what kind of technological assumptions you're making in addition to permitting FTL. (And, to a lesser degree, the economic assumptions which flow from your technological assumptions.) You're right, though, that it increasingly looks like the average man who goes off-world in the World of Tomorrow™ is going to be a specialized worker venturing off into a dangerous and unforgiving environment to work a Cosmic Offshore Oil Rig as opposed to a plucky adventurer signing on for swashbuckling adventure on the Sindalian Main or a new life on whatever verdant world his Wagon Train to the Stars ends up on.

Big problem with a lifeless universe would be no fossil fuels both for energy and other products plus habitation whether or not for mineral exploitation. Our own system has mineral resources to satisfy our every need for a very long time. If we were to discover working fusion reactors, energy would be taken care of. The only reason to extract resources at greater distances would be to make colonies self sufficient rather than feeding a demand from the home world. Habitation on lifeless worlds would be tremendously expensive and inefficient especially if all we're doing is spreading the seed simply because.

One problem people who experience scifi don't realize is an abundant oxygen atmosphere would be a rarity without life. It was the abundant life in our primitive dawn that enabled our reducing atmosphere ( "A reducing atmosphere is an atmospheric condition in which oxidation is prevented by removal of oxygen and other oxidizing gases or vapours, and which may contain actively reducing gases such as hydrogen, carbon monoxide and gases that would oxidize in the presence of oxygen, such as hydrogen sulfide.") to be converted to the oxidizing atmosphere we know. It's one reason Mars is mostly carbon dioxide. By the way, yes, oxygen was the waste product of the original life forms. We exist by their pollution!

Life began on Earth pretty much as soon as the surface cooled enough that it wasn't molten rock everywhere. That suggests that life will develop rapidly in most life zone planets. Life is probably abundant.

What may not be so abundant is interesting life -- anything more complex than bacteria and algae. Complex life seems to require a much less common set of circumstances.

Also unknown is whether photosynthesis that releases oxygen is likely. That didn't develop on Earth until well after the first life had appeared, and because microorganisms don't leave a lot of fossils we don't know whether that's because it's something Earth developed late, a typical course of the development of life, or something unusual.

When we have telescopes powerful enough to measure spectra of planetary atmospheres, we'll be able to tell whether oxygen generating photosynthesis is common, because it's the only plausible way to get significant free oxygen into a planetary atmosphere. Such telescopes could also answer "yes" about life in general (since oxygen generating life is a subset), but couldn't answer "no" (because it can't see life that doesn't generate oxygen).

Wikipedia has a great page for Trappist-1 with known information and artist interpretation of the planets. I'm extrapolating to create a Traveller based system without the messiness of reality. Trappist-1g looks like a green jungle or forest world with a massive continental belt wrapping the planet.

Big problem with a lifeless universe would be no fossil fuels both for energy and other products plus habitation whether or not for mineral exploitation.

Although we can be quite certain that the majority of hydrocarbons on Earth were as a result of biological deposition (hence - fossil fuel), it still doesn't rule out non-biological formation on other planets. In fact, the discovery of methane on Titan would only reinforce the idea that it is a plentiful resource, with or without organic life: http://principia-scientific.org/nasa-fi ... itan.html/

So, for some fun here's my interpretation for a Traveller system Trappist-1. I used the information on Wikipedia including the illustrations for the planets. There are no gas giants or planetoid belts and the seven planets have orbits similar to satellites around Jupiter. Their orbits are all below Orbit 0 in most Traveller editions. Each entry includes the planet designation, distance from Trappist-1 in AUs, orbit period in days, planet radius and mass relative to Earth and their UWP code.

Extreme interpretation that throws out real world evidence such as the Extreme UV radiation but Traveller never truly worries for a good space opera adventure... except maybe MegaTraveller.

Those planets are close and moving fast, folks. Standing on any of them gives a show of worlds with apparent diameters bigger than Luna whizzing past regularly. Trappist-1 could be considered a subject for Referees Briefing 2: Anomalies and Wonders.

For a break to the 2300 crowd, I worked out some extended world characteristics from the Tools for Frontier Living for determining settlement likelihood. The parameters are Biosphere (aggregate mass of all life 1 x 10 to the die roll millions of tons), Biodiversity (number of species in millions), Biocomplexity (structural complexity of the organisms from single cell only to hive minds dominant) summed up as the Biosphere, the average of the three. In addition to this is Compatibility(how different are comparable lifeforms), Natural resources (exploitable and Habitability (comfortable for humans based on Earth as a 10)

Trappist-1b With no atmosphere or water, this world is a tided locked dead ball with no life characteristics and Habitability 0 but has Natural Resource 5
Trappist-1c 0/ 1/ 1/ 0.67// 14/ 8/ 0 Has a trace of very simple life highly compatible to Earth life.
Trappist-1d 2/ 3/ 1/ 3.33// 12/ 8/ 9
Trappist-1e 8/ 7/ 7/ 7.14// 8/ 7/ 7 Tens of trillions of tons of diverse species with some having social/hive forms compatible with Earth life.
Trappist-1f 4/ 4/ 7/ 5.00// 9/ 9/ 9
Trappist-1g 9/ 9/ 7/ 8.33// 10/ 12/ 6 Quadrillions of tons of teeming species with some having social/hive forms compatible with Earth life.
Trappist-1h 2/ 1/ 3/ 2.00// 8/ 0/ 3